children in need of special protection

March 1998

Background

Sierra Leonean children have suffered from violent acts since the beginning of war eight years ago. The 25 May coup has resulted in further violence and family separation, thus further exposure of children to distress and to trauma. Given the extension of recent combat, the majority of Sierra Leonean children have been exposed to traumatic events and therefore need the care, nurturing and support of their parents to help them re-establish a sense of normalcy in their lives. With their caregivers’ support and time, children will be able in the majority of cases to recover from their invisible wounds. A limited number of children have been particularly affected by traumatic events. They will need more specialised care and attention to help them recover from their psychological wounds and to reintegrate into their families and communities. The Child Protection Committee proposes general guidelines to help in the psycho-social recovery of Sierra Leonean children.

Since May 25, 1997 despite ongoing fighting in certain areas, the National Tracing Network agencies of Sierra Leone have been able to trace and reunify a limited number of children in certain regions of the country. Among those children were those separated from their families by war while fleeing from the scene of attacks and children who were abducted by rebel groups. There were also children who were associated with fighting forces. Given the security situation and the dramatic impact of war on the Sierra Leonean economy, families have difficulties ensuring the basic needs of children such as food, clothing and shelter. Furthermore, given the past military experience of some children, communities have shown reluctance or have even refused their return. Therefore, a successful reunification does not necessarily mean a successful reintegration. Sierra Leonean children need special care and protection measures. And because peace has not yet been restored and there is no formal demobilisation process, that need is urgent.

Peace and safety are generally considered as absolute conditions to a successful reintegration of children. Families must be able to survive and to make a living. Those who have been severely affected by war and violence such as disabled children, traumatised or abused children must be supported in their efforts to resume normal lives. These conditions for a successful reintegration are rights embedded in the Convention on the Rights of the Child in the Preamble and in its Articles 27-1 and 39. The child must grow up "in a family environment, in an atmosphere of happiness, love and understanding".

The child’s right to "a standard of living adequate for the child’s physical, mental, spiritual, moral and social development" is essential.

Because of the dramatic effect of violence on any person and particularly on children who have been direct victims or have witnessed violent acts, some of the children will need specialised support to help them in their reintegration in compliance with article 39 of the Convention on the Rights of the Child: "State Parties shall take all appropriate measures to promote physical and psychological recovery and social reintegration of a child victim of ¼armed conflicts. Such recovery shall take place in an environment which fosters the health, self-respect and dignity of the child."

Sierra Leonean children in need of special protection

The definition of psychosocial that the Child Protection Committee has adopted for its programmes is the following:

--The word "psychosocial" simply underlines the dynamic relationship between psychological and social effects, each continually influencing the other. "Psychological effects " are those which affect emotions, behaviour, thoughts, memory, learning ability, perceptions and understanding. "Social effects" refer to altered relationships due to death, separation, estrangement and other losses, family and community breakdown, damage to social values and customary practices and the destruction of social facilities and services. "Social effects" also extend to the economic dimension as many individuals and families become destitute through the material and economic devastation thus losing their social status and place in their familiar social network.--

In emergencies non physical needs of children tend to be overlooked as they are not lifesaving activities and are generally considered as part of the reconstruction efforts and tend to be postponed to a later development stage. In postwar situations, non-physical needs of children are included in reconstruction efforts in the form of service-delivery: education, health, water and sanitation. However, children in need of special protection measures such as demobilised child soldiers, children released from fighting forces, reunified unaccompanied children, street children, disabled and children in institutions encounter greater difficulties to access those services than the rest of the child population. The final objective of agencies and workers caring for those children is therefore to bridge the gap between these children in need of special protection and the rest of the population. This complies with article 2 of the Convention on the Rights of the Child which establishes the principle of non-discrimination of children based on race, colour, gender or any other consideration.

While doing so, social workers and agencies must act beyond any political, ethnical, religious, economic or social consideration following the principle of primacy of the humanitarian imperative over any other consideration.

The Child Protection Committee understands its role in the reintegration of children as composed of four basic and equally important strategies which will result in restoring normalcy in the lives of children.

1. Family reunification

2. Ensuring access to education, health and other basic services to all children

3. Supporting the psychological recovery of children in distress

4. Promoting family and community mediation

1. Family reunification

The best psychological support a child can get comes from his or her parents. As R.J. Apfel and B. Simon reminded us in 1995, "children can suffer more from separation from their mothers than from fear of the combat". Tracing and reunification activities remain the first step to be taken when dealing with the psychological healing of children in need of special protection measures. Wrongful past experiences had led to the institutionalisation of children on the grounds of psychosocial recovery or treatment. Family reunification is the principle; institutionalisation of children must be an exceptional measure, for the shortest period of time possible. Institutionalisation must be supervised by competent authorities.

2. Ensuring access to basic services to all children.

Once children are reunified or placed in interim care, the basic needs of all children must be met, based on article 2 of the Convention on the Rights of the Child. Without establishing a prioritisation among basic services , education experiences in Slovenia and the Teacher Emergency Packages (TEPs) in post-genocide Rwanda and the School-in-a-box kits in Rwandan refugee camps in Eastern Zaire "point us the tremendous importance of school in establishing and re-establishing some order and sanity in the lives of children traumatised by violence. School can provide the stabilising framework in which the child’s imaginative and cognitive skills can safely grow, and grow in relative safety".

Meeting the needs of and ensuring access to basic services to children in need of special protection measures requires particular efforts from child care and child protection agencies. A service delivery approach is often insufficient as the service may be available in the community but for a variety of reasons might not be accessible to a particular child and/or his or her family. A former child soldier might be perceived as an enemy that does not deserve having access to the health center; a traumatised child might be rejected by the community thus denied access to primary school. Child care agencies will make every possible efforts to ensure access to basic services to all children in the community through case-by-case sensitisation and mediation efforts. Solving the case of one child in need of special protection at a time might help find solutions for the larger number through the mobilisation of the community and through the identification of new resources and allies.

Ensuring the child an adequate standard of living is a right granted by the Convention on the rights of the child( Article 27-1). The lack of food and inadequate standard of living engenders conflict. The Child Protection agencies will advocate for support to these children and their families through mainstream programmes such as agricultural projects and income generating projects. Programmes that will stigmatize former child soldiers, raped young girls and street children for example should be avoided. Projects will be adapted to local economic realities and will follow as much as possible the individual interest and potential of concerned: a village might not be able to provide sustained occupation for 10 carpenters and 10 auto-repair specialists; some attractive new technologies might not be sustainable due to cost or unavailability of raw materials, or due to the lack of market demand for that particular product. Preference must be given to traditional occupations related to local markets and socio-economic reality. Projects must encourage using local skills and techniques based on traditional and customary knowledge that may be improved with external support. Likewise, if vocational training programmes are launched, they should be based on market assessments. These activities should be implemented immediately. They should be considered as part of the follow up activities of reunified unaccompanied children.

3. Supporting the psychological recovery of children in distress

However, a small number of children who were severely affected and traumatised will need specialised care. In order to identify children in need of specialised care, a national referral network must be established. Based on over a year of training of governmental and non governmental staff, Christian Children’s Fund has provided basic skills in psychosocial support to more than 600 child welfare workers in Sierra Leone. This informal network must be extended to cover every chiefdom and strengthened. Links must be re-established and clear instructions given for referral of all cases of children who are considered as in need of specialised psychological help. To do so, it is essential to establish strong coordination links between all psychosocial programmes in the country. The national network will function as an inter-agency psychosocial support system where agencies will complement each other in order to provide children with the services they need at different levels of intervention.

The first level of intervention is the care givers. The training will help them to play a vital role in community reintegration of children in distress. They will act as mediators to ensure the involvement of community leaders in the reunification and ensure the child’s access to basic services. The care givers are not to be trained as psychotherapists. Experience in Sierra Leone has shown that doing so gives false expectations to the trainees in terms of salary and employment opportunities. The training must provide new skills to care givers on how to effectively mobilise the community on behalf of children in need. In brief, the objective of the training is to develop their skills as social workers within the institutions they are working with. The temptation of creating a new parallel structure for psychosocial recovery of children is not financially or technically sustainable.

Activities should take into consideration the cultural and traditional practices and the socio-economic status of the people. The activities must be determined by the expressed needs of the children and their communities. Traditional and non-traditional interventions may be required to assist the child to return to the normal developmental path. To do so, care givers and social workers are encouraged to give due consideration to contacts and collaboration with traditional and religious leaders, secret societies and organisations whenever a positive and constructive contribution can be made to the psychosocial recovery of children in full compliance with the Convention on the Rights of the Child. In Mozambique, help from traditional healers made the return of children who committed atrocities possible and initiated the reintegration and healing process. In Cambodian refugee camps in Thailand, supporting Buddhist monks and some of the traditional healers proved essential "to help a highly traumatised and still endangered population get in touch with its roots and its traditions and especially to resume some sort of traditional Buddhist education for children". In the urban surroundings of Liberia, the input from "trauma counselors" proved to be beneficial. Responses will be creative and sensitive to local conditions, values, cultural and social background and to the environment surrounding the child keeping in mind the absolute necessity of avoiding stigmatizing the child by identifying her or him as traumatised, former child soldier or raped young girl.

As part of the skills they are provided with, the care givers will be able to identify severely traumatised children who need special support. For the moment , there is limited professional capacity in Sierra Leone to provide adequate specialist care to severely traumatised children. A top priority for child care and protection agencies will be to restore a minimal capacity. Support will be requested from specialised agencies with experience in the field of mental health. The referral system will be closely associated with the health system to ensure adequate professional supervision and quality control.

4. Promoting family and community mediation

Reconstruction and reconciliation efforts go hand-in-hand. As the essential component of society, the family unit must be supported in order to encourage social acceptance and tolerance. Given the particular situation of Sierra Leone, special efforts will be made by Child Care agencies in the area of conflict prevention and resolution through family and community mediation activities. The human and financial investment made on the social reintegration of a limited number of returning child soldiers and children released from fighting forces will have a disproportionate positive effect on communities and on the whole nation. On the contrary, not acting and not giving special attention to children in need of special protection may lead to a disproportionate human cost in terms of new or unresolved conflicts in communities and families, to violence, criminality as a result of rejection, lack of communication, understanding and tolerance. In promoting family and community mediation efforts, the Child Protection Committee again stresses the importance of traditional Sierra Leonean means of conflict resolution, and of the use of traditional and customary networks, religious leaders and traditional leaders.